Intel Ivy Bridge launch delayed until June

The launch of Intel's Ivy Bridge processors has been pushed back until June, according to the Financial Times. Intel China chairman Sean Maloney told the FT that the processors were originally due in April, but have been delayed due to the new manufacturing process the chips use.

The Ivy Bridge processors are the first to use Intel's new 22nm process with 3D transistors. The new process allows for substantially reduced power consumption or increased clockspeeds, with Intel describing the performance gains in low-power chips as "unprecedented."

Maloney's statements corroborate previous rumors that volume shipment of Ivy Bridge was delayed until June. These rumored delays were attributed to the company having large stockpiles of unsold Sandy Bridge inventory.

The delays are sure to come as a blow to all those wanting to buy—or sell—an Ultrabook laptop. On top of its lower power consumption, Ivy Bridge will also sport a considerably faster integrated GPU, with benchmarks of leaked parts showing the new GPU to be about 60-70 percent faster than the current Sandy Bridge version.

Ugh. I need a new MacBook Pro (or 15" Air, if the rumors are true) soon and know that a form-factor refresh was due Any Minute Now (tm). I hope that refresh isn't dependent on Ivy Bridge, but I think it probably is. I can't wait that long, so I'll have to buy Old and Busted hardware. Oh well...

Hmm. I think this means sick deals on Sandy Bridge computers for longer than usual in the months to come

Why would it? The original launch date for Ivy Bridge hasn't created any "sick deals" that I've noticed, so I'm not sure why delaying IVB would change that. Sure, you'll see the usual old-model-flush from Dell and friends, but that happens at every new launch anyway.

Hmm. I think this means sick deals on Sandy Bridge computers for longer than usual in the months to come

Why would it? The original launch date for Ivy Bridge hasn't created any "sick deals" that I've noticed, so I'm not sure why delaying IVB would change that. Sure, you'll see the usual old-model-flush from Dell and friends, but that happens at every new launch anyway.

Yeah I suppose you're right; all this will do is delay the model flush a bit

And I wanted to replace my Phenom X4 965 with something a bit more beefy for compiling software, while at the same time taking advantage of the low TDPs of Ivy Bridge for lower power consumption (my desktop runs 24/7/365, never sleeps) and being able to use a passive cooling solution.

My Black Friday Core i7 iMac will be the fastest available iMac for two more months! In 24 years of using Macs, I've never before owned the fastest one available and now I get to enjoy the feeling for even longer....

I wonder if they might give Apple the prerelease stuff as they have done in the past.

Wondering the same. What are the chances of Apple getting Ivy Bridge early by placing a big juicy order?

But how would that affect Intel other partners, like Dell and HP, which sell more Intel based products than Apple?

At the end of the day it's about the money, so if Apple secured some early release or preferential access to inventory, then the others will have to wait. This is no different than how they work with panel and flash storage makers.

I was hoping Ivy would come out shortly so Sandy would drop in price. I could use an upgrade from my C2D.

Same, I was about to bite last year, but decided to get a few new parts (battery and faster, larger hard drive) to extend the life of my old inspiron 1520 a little longer. At almost 5 years, I'm starting to feel the age of the rest of the components, however, and I'm a little annoyed that it seems like they delayed just to give themselves more time to ditch old supplies. Sure, that's their prerogative, but the longer they wait to get them out in volume, the longer the money stays with me.

with benchmarks of leaked parts showing the new GPU to be about 60-70 percent faster than the current Sandy Bridge version.

That won't change the fact that it's driver will still be shit...

SB IGP is 1/2 the speed in game compared to AMD's current APU offerings. 60-70% increase almost puts it on par. Should be about 20-15% slower. But then again, the max TDP of the IB chip is about 1/3 that of AMD's APU offerings and the CPU much faster.

with benchmarks of leaked parts showing the new GPU to be about 60-70 percent faster than the current Sandy Bridge version.

That won't change the fact that it's driver will still be shit...

SB IGP is 1/2 the speed in game compared to AMD's current APU offerings. 60-70% increase almost puts it on par. Should be about 20-15% slower. But then again, the max TDP of the IB chip is about 1/3 that of AMD's APU offerings and the CPU much faster.

What a load of...

...first you compare things based on price, second in every comparison Intel sucks by at least 3-4x-fold when it comes to mobile Radeons, pretty much rendering any Intel HD useless for anything beyond playing back videos.

Seriously, an APU-based Lenovo X120 starts at $400, less than half of a similarly equipped Ultrabook with Intel HD.

However for the price of an Ultrabook you can get a Sony SA-series (v4) w/ latest Core i5, a decent IPS 1600x900 display and switchable graphics with Radeon 6630M 1GB - this mops the floor with any Intel junk on the market in any benchmark: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... 1644768015

with benchmarks of leaked parts showing the new GPU to be about 60-70 percent faster than the current Sandy Bridge version.

That won't change the fact that it's driver will still be shit...

SB IGP is 1/2 the speed in game compared to AMD's current APU offerings. 60-70% increase almost puts it on par. Should be about 20-15% slower. But then again, the max TDP of the IB chip is about 1/3 that of AMD's APU offerings and the CPU much faster.

What a load of...

...first you compare things based on price, second in every comparison Intel sucks by at least 3-4x-fold when it comes to mobile Radeons, pretty much rendering any Intel HD useless for anything beyond playing back videos.

Seriously, an APU-based Lenovo X120 starts at $400, less than half of a similarly equipped Ultrabook with Intel HD.

However for the price of an Ultrabook you can get a Sony SA-series (v4) w/ latest Core i5, a decent IPS 1600x900 display and switchable graphics with Radeon 6630M 1GB - this mops the floor with any Intel junk on the market in any benchmark: http://store.sony.com/webapp/wcs/stores ... 1644768015

Good old misleading comments from Intel. If the delay is due to the new manufacturing process the chips use, then "manufacturing process the chips use" = wanting to squeeze more mileage out of SB before giving us something better. Nothing is a clearer indication of how consumers get screwed by lack of decent competition for Intel than the fact that they can get away with just arbitrarily holding off releasing a new processor generation so they can coast a bit longer on their older product. They couldn't do that if AMD was right on their tail like they used to be.

I wonder if this is going to push back their whole schedule or if we can still expect Haswell to launch in spring 2013. My current plans are to build a whole new rig shortly after the Haswell launch. Hopefully I won't have to wait until fall of next year to do that.

I wonder if they might give Apple the prerelease stuff as they have done in the past.

Wondering the same. What are the chances of Apple getting Ivy Bridge early by placing a big juicy order?

But how would that affect Intel other partners, like Dell and HP, which sell more Intel based products than Apple?

Often, it hasn't affected them at all. Because intel only needs to ship enough for Apple (which is pretty low) it can get the first ones out the door (when they are worth the most). It doesn't really affect Dell or HP really, since they are selling to two different markets. And since intel doesn't have a full pipeline, Dell and HP can't sell everything with them anyway (since supply is constrained). So they need to wait until they can get at least as much as they need. And Apple doesn't care about the backlog-they control their's pretty tightly, and can afford to mark down last year's models to clear them out unlike Dell and HP who have smaller margins.

Ugh. I need a new MacBook Pro (or 15" Air, if the rumors are true) soon and know that a form-factor refresh was due Any Minute Now (tm). I hope that refresh isn't dependent on Ivy Bridge, but I think it probably is. I can't wait that long, so I'll have to buy Old and Busted hardware. Oh well...

They have no real reason to introduce IvyBridge while even the SandyBridge line has no forseable competition.It is downright remarkable, and ironically, a testament to Intel, that the core I5 2500K has held onto its original price for almost 2 years.

Over and over agian we see that when you have a good product, and no real competitor, you don't really need 'promotions' and 'incentives' and tactics like that.

I contemplated waiting for IvyBridge Mac, but in the end decided the exsiting one is good enough and I can have it now.

I was considering buying Ivy bridge for my new rig but checking out the leaked benchmarks was severely disappointing. The cpu performance improved by ~5-9%. The gpu performance was great at 60% improvement and the power consumption drop was good at 16%. You know what that means to me? Zero. This is a high end desktop cpu. I'm running a 700W power supply...do I really care about a 15W change in efficiency? Do I really care about better integrated gpu performance when I'm already considering doing an crossfire GPU setup? No.

I'm honestly very disappointed with Ivy bridge so far...no wonder they're delaying it. They're trying to milk Sandy bridge as much as possible. Now I need to decide whether to just go with a 2500k now or wait for the next iteration next year.